Cammie Kannekens' Blog -always learning something from someone

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Implementing VR #4: YouTube Playlist

Touring our PRSD8 Google Expedition Virtual Reality set around our vast school division has been quite delightful. The first reactions of the students from K-12 to the virtual world brings a smile to my face every time–as does the grinning teacher, watching the first reactions of his or her students. Yet, there is so much more to discover in the virtual reality world than Google Expeditions, especially since it (Expeditions) is so American based in content.

So it was with great excitement that we were able to successfully launch our first YouTube 360 playlist. A school in Oyen wanted to use VR “to do Olympic events” for an Olympic-themed day that they were having. Since nothing of the sort currently exists in Google Expeditions, I knew this was the opportunity that I had been looking for to push myself to try and create a YouTube playlist and use it with a class of students.

It turned out to be a great success, as over 10 groups of 10-13 students filed through our ‘viewing parlor’, took a comfy seat, and launched into our Olympic events playlist: bobsled, ski jump, luge, skeleton, downhill skiing, snowboard cross. A few teachers even made it through the whole experience!

Watch below as the grade 1 students in Mrs. Roberston’s class experience the thrill of the ski jump!

This particular playlist worked very well for the small groups of students that we had a one time. A downfall to using YouTube is that you have to click quite a few spots to get to the playlist AND get the viewer into “Google Cardboard” mode. Cathy and I clicked all of the buttons each time for each student, as one wrong click, and it takes much longer to get back to the correct place.

A key element to using the playlist was to have a distinct acronym in the title (PRSD8VR). This playlist was the only thing that came up when searching YouTube, which then made it easy to select and save to the “Library”. Once we had put the playlist in the Library of every viewer, it made it much more convenient to launch the playlist quickly.

The Olympic theme certainly made the YouTube playlist a great place for a trial run. Thanks Oyen Public for helping push problem solving!